1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an ink jet printing apparatus including a printing head which discharges ink onto a printing side of a surface of a printing target material to be transported so as to execute desired printing.
2. Related Art
In an apparel (clothing) manufacturer and a textile (fabric) manufacturer, existing “printing” in which a pattern and the like are printed on a surface of a fabric has been widely performed.
Further, as a printing apparatus which performs printing, an ink jet printing apparatus which makes ink which has been discharged from a printing head adhere directly onto a printing target material so as to execute printing has been developed.
As a technical problem specific to the ink jet printing apparatus of this type, there arises a problem due to swelling of a surface of a printing target material (for example, woven fabric) on a printing side. For example, swelling portions (raised portions) such as a stitched portion, a zipper, and a pocket are present on a cloth. Therefore, there is a risk that a head surface of an ink jet printing head makes contact with the swelling portions at the time of printing and a printing result is adversely affected. In contrast, if the ink jet printing head is made farther from the printing target material in order to solve the above-described problem, there arises a risk that image quality is lowered due to this distancing.
On the other hand, a technique for overcoming difficulties that a seam and a folding portion being present on a needlework generate differences in thickness when the needlework is placed on a flat surface is disclosed in JP-A-2001-96729. That is to say, a technique of sandwiching a mat board such as a foam sheet between a carrier (table on which the needlework is placed) and an image recording portion of the needlework and lifting the image recording portion so as to minimize the distance between the recording head and the image recording portion has been proposed.
With the technique as described in JP-A-2001-96729, contact between the seamed portion and the recording head can be avoided by lifting the image recording portion to be higher than the seamed portion with the mat board. However, since the image recording portion is lifted with the mat board, fluctuation in a thickness of the mat board leads to fluctuation in a distance between the recording head and the needlework as it is. Accordingly, a preferable recording result cannot be necessarily obtained in some cases.